


Oxenfurt Blues

by teamfreehoodies



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: But not enough for a character tag, Comfort, Jaskier has a bad day, Jaskier | Dandelion is a Mess, M/M, Modern!Fusion, Oxenfurt Academy (The Witcher), Plague, Pris is there too, Professor Jaskier | Dandelion, Take Your Witcher To Work, Teacher Jaskier | Dandelion, by which I mean Oxenfurt is doing hybrid schooling but its all magic based
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:42:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29849307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teamfreehoodies/pseuds/teamfreehoodies
Summary: For now, Jaskier tried to empty his head of his rapidly ever-expanding to-do list, which seemed to populate new tasks on its own every time he turned around. Attendance and grading and calls to missing students and lesson planning and department meetings and leadership meetings and student concerns meetings and office hours, and— it never stopped. Either a new task or a new meeting invitation or just a new missive that needed responding to. His stack of mail, sitting currently abandoned on the side-table by his door, was thicker than the last book he’d read and not so nearly well-organized.Self-Indulgent Vent!Fic about hybrid teaching in the year of our quarantine, 2021. Written for Take Your Witcher to Work Event.
Relationships: Eskel/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 7
Kudos: 43
Collections: Bring your witcher to work!





	Oxenfurt Blues

**Author's Note:**

> Listen. I have had the _shittiest_ fucking time of my life as a first year teacher during the goddamn literal pandemic, and I thought, you know, maybe _I_ don't have a strong witcher to cuddle me better, but I for sure know a bard who might. So here there be Stress, of the Hybrid Schooling Sucks variety, and then there be Cuddles, of the Eskel is a Teddy Bear variety. 
> 
> Enjoy!

When Oxenfurt had closed last March, Jaskier had been certain they’d be back after the first fourteen days had flattened the curve of the rising plague numbers across Kaedwen. It had been so simple then.

As Jaskier closed out of his latest Megascope meeting, (which he’d heard a student refer to as ‘Scoping’ the other day,) he immediately slithered off his couch to lay flat out on the floor. He’d have to get up in half an hour, to attend another asinine meeting that Oxenfurt had decided was absolutely necessary in these “challenging times” (and truly, if Jaskier had to read another missive that started with _any_ variation of that phrase he was going to lose his thrice-damned _mind_.)

For now, he tried to empty his head of his rapidly ever-expanding to-do list, which seemed to populate new tasks on its own every time he turned around. Attendance and grading and calls to missing students and lesson planning and department meetings and leadership meetings and student concerns meetings and office hours, and— it never stopped. Either a new task or a new meeting invitation or just a new missive that needed responding to. His stack of mail, sitting currently abandoned on the side-table by his door, was thicker than the last book he’d read and not so nearly well-organized.

He was running on empty, drained, exhausted, mentally fatigued; and he still had nearly four months until this term was over.

He dug his thumb into his temple, pushing at the muscle there which had been jumping since his second meeting of the day had wound down, and which had made his dean ask after him in this last one; meeting four and counting of a hellacious “development day,” which again, was eating into his precious time for any of the many tasks that needed done by the end of the week. _Hells bells_ , but some of those tasks needed done truly by the end of the _day,_ although he didn’t think any of the administration were actually checking attendance daily anyways, so he felt it mattered little if he just... recorded it tomorrow.

But then again, he’d been putting off recording attendance in the management system for nearly three weeks now, and all the hard data in the world mattered little if he didn’t report it.

_Fuck._

And even then, of course, a parent might write him, asking why their child had been marked absent if they weren’t notified about it, hadn’t been informed, and truly, there was little Jaskier hated more than dealing with the parents of his students. He’d not gotten into education to speak to adults– in fact the whole reason he was even teaching at all was because he cared about the children more than anything else.

And yet...

He couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d seen one of his student’s faces. Not since they’d found a way to block the image while “scoping” and shared it with their entire class. He dug his thumb in further, trying to still the budding headache before it turned into a bonafide migraine. That was the last thing he needed before he had to head into the two hour “development” session awaiting him.

Tears of pure frustration pricked at his eyes, before he laughed, shaking his head against the floor. No, absolutely not, he was _not_ going to cry about this.

This was not how he’d pictured his first official year of teaching. His Xenovox dinged, an incoming call, and he didn’t bother sitting up as he flipped it open.

“Don’t freak out.”

“I do so love when you start our calls this way,” he laughed, dragging his hand down his face as he sat up, bracing for whatever terrible news Priscilla was calling to dump on him.

“Yeah well, it’s more a reminder for me than for you.” Pris replied, voice tinny over the connection. Even so, he could almost picture the way she’d roll her eyes at herself, and he ached with missing her. It had been almost three months of total closure now since their first disastrous attempt at in-person teaching had sent ten professors home with the plague and put nearly forty of their students in extended quarantine. “We’re going back.”

“Hmmm, right, excuse me.” Jaskier said, then put his face in the crook of his elbow and _screamed._

“I said don’t freak out!” Pris cried.

“This is _not_ me freaking out,” Jaskier retorted when he returned to the call, rubbing his temple again as he dropped his head forward, suddenly even more exhausted then he’d been just seconds before. “Trust me,” he continued, “you’ll know when I’m freaking out. This is just the prelude to my complete and utter breakdown where I gently implode into the hollowed out effigy of a man on the brink and you have to burn me as a sacrifice to the higher goddesses to solve the damn plague crisis on our hands.”

“Yeah, you do that,” Pris said, snorting at him. “In the meantime, check the returning students log I sent you. You have to count your students and make sure you don’t have more than twelve in the classroom at any time.”

“If I have to open another spreadsheet that isn’t fucking sortable, Prissy, I’m going to walk down to the dean’s office and resign, I swear it.” But even as he said it, he was flipping open his workbook, spelled to copy any document created into it for shared creation and editing. Truly, this was both the single most useful piece of spellwork he’d ever seen and the most annoying– nearly four times a week Jaskier dreamed of just burning it and being done with the whole affair. But that would only set him back on his to-do list while he waited for a replacement, and not actually accomplish anything except landing him in hot water with administration.

He existed there enough already just for shaking things up when the stuffy bats refused to change, he’d little interest in winding up on their shit list again this term. He’d been doing so well as of late, at keeping his temper in-check.

“Only if you take me with you,” Pris said, laughing warmly down the other end of the line as she brought his attention back to their conversation..

“Oh, don’t tempt me,” Jaskier answered, finally finding the spreadsheet she’d sent him. “Sadly, our dreams are not to be realized,” he sighed, tapping the tiny runes that would let him sort out the information he didn’t need. “Looks like someone finally taught Astaire how to use this thing.”

“Damn.”

There was a moment of silence as they shared in the brief mourning of their wildest fantasies of not being extremely overworked, criminally underpaid, and _hilariously_ undervalued.

“Well.” Pris said finally, “Get that to me when you can, but no later than the weekend. We’re going back next week.”

“Incredible.” Jaskier sat back down on the couch, Xenovox held precariously between his ear and lifted shoulder as he reached forward to set up the Megascope for that afternoons’ meeting. “Sure do wish they’d give us any time to plan for this at all. Wouldn’t that have been nice?”

Pris sighed, a world-weary sound, and then made a tiny high-pitched noise of assent in his ear. “Yeah, yeah it sure would have been.” She laughed darkly, “Welcome to Oxenfurt, babe. I promise it’s not as bad your third year.”

“Yeah,” Jaskier sighed, staring blankly at his own tired face in the darkened mirror of the megascopes blank screen as he waited for the meeting to start. “That’s what I’ve been told.”

* * *

Jaskier had become a teacher after graduation for– well a lot of reasons, really, but the only one that mattered now was that he’d wanted to help students. That had been the whole goal. The entire purpose.

He tapped his quill against the paper in front of him, re-reading for, perhaps, the seventh-time, the words on the page. “I thought teachers cared about their students, but this is just selfish.”

A sort of simmering rage was sitting behind his sternum, mixing with the low-level guilt that had been his constant companion since the first time he’d failed to take attendance day-of, or put off planning a lesson until the morning before, or taken more than a week to grade an assignment.

“...this is just selfish.”

Right, because, _obviously,_ not wanting to die was worthy of scorn. It wasn’t even aimed at him directly, merely an article in _The Oxenfurt Chronicle_ he’d happened upon by chance, and yet–

The title of the article that the opinion-piece had been written about caught his eye again, and he reread it dully. _Oxenfurt Professor’s Guild Pushes Back Against Rushed Re-Opening, Cites Health Concerns_.

He’d been part of that guild meeting, actually. He’d watched as his colleagues had stood up to share their concerns, their worries for the families at home who would be at risk if they went back without proper safety measures. They’d cited the first re-opening, shared results from the latest studies about the transmission rates, shown in verifiable data that Oxenfurt wasn’t prepared yet, didn’t have a real concrete plan to keep students and teachers safe. Nevermind a _plan_ even, they simply didn’t have the resources needed, not enough masks available for students who couldn’t source their own, nevermind a robust enough ventilation system, or _hell_ , even the ability to keep students more than three feet apart from each other, even though all the data pointed at six feet being the minimum safe distance.

“...just selfish.”

Marjorie's infant daughter came to mind suddenly, Eizend’s already sick wife, Razae herself, chronically ill; the very real, very concerning idea that any of them might be at risk for this made his heart hurt.

Was it selfish to not want to risk his life? He’d become a professor under the knowledge that it wasn’t a profession particularly laden with life or death risks, actually. Had he known he’d be expected to be willing to die for it, he doesn’t know if he’d have pursued it as diligently.

A knock at the door startled him, and he let the quill clatter back to his desk, groaning as he unfolded from the uncomfortable pose he’d unintentionally fallen into while he’d been working. He was young still, but eight hours hunched over a writing desk as he planned and graded and made materials in between Scope classes was wearing on him. He felt ancient some days when he finally stopped working.

The knock sounded again, more tentative this time, and Jaskier picked up the pace, not wanting his visitor to leave. If he was who he thought it was, this might just be the best thing to happen since Eskel had last visited at the beginning of autumn.

“Please, please, _please_ tell me you’ve brought good news.” he cried, tossing the door open.

 _Thank the gods_ , but it _was_ Eskel, blinking bemusedly at Jaskier.

“What, I’m not enough just on my own?” he asked, pushing into the apartment.

“Oh, you’re more than enough for me, witcher.” Jaskier purred, shutting the door with his foot so he could wind his arms around Eskel’s waist, dropping his head to rest between the witcher's shoulder blades. It stopped his forward momentum into the apartment, but he let it happen, lowering his bag to the floor and placing his hands, warm and large and so sorely missed over Jaskier’s.

“How have you been?” Eskel asked, still letting Jaskier lean into his back. The question, innocent enough, brought quite suddenly all the dread Jaskier had been feeling to sit in his throat, and he shook his head, unable to put into words the depth of anxiety he felt about returning to school tomorrow morning. “That bad, huh?” Eskel asked, turning around in Jaskier’s grip so he could wrap him up in his arms.

Jaskier melted, tucking his nose into Eskel’s neck, just under his ear. He was a wall of warmth, arms like heat packs across the tension in Jaskier’s spine, and he let Eskel hold him up, trusting in the simple comfort of his witcher taking care of him.

“I missed you,” he mumbled into the tiny sliver of space between his mouth and Eskel’s skin, enjoying the visible effects his words had on the witcher as he shuddered, jolting forward almost unconsciously into Jaskier’s thigh. Oh, he was _definitely_ interested.

“I missed you too,” Eskel said, then in the kind of display of strength that still made Jaskier’s knees go weak with the gut-punch of lust and love it spun up, grabbed Jaskier by the thighs and lifted, laughing as Jaskier wrapped his legs around him and clung like a limpet.

“I love you, so fucking much,” he whispered, wrapping his arms more securely around Eskel’s neck, though he knew Eskel would’t drop him even if he didn’t. It was more a gesture of comfort than worry over his position.

“I knew you were just after me for my body.” Eskel replied, taking the three steps to get to Jaskier’s bed like he was unburdened entirely— _gods,_ but there were some serious benefits to dating a witcher, even if they couldn’t always see each other. Jaskier would put up with the long winters apart and the infrequent visits over autumn and spring: just so long as he got to keep this, Eskel warm and safe in his arms, the perfect balm against any ill life should choose to throw at him.

“Well, it’s such a good body, who wouldn’t want to climb all over it?” Jaskier murmured, pressing kisses to every exposed inch of skin as Eskel gently laid him down on the bed, dropping his own weight over top of Jaskier like the world’s most secure blanket. Tears pricked, unbidden, at Jaskier’s eyes and he pressed another kiss to Eskel’s lips, hoping that Eskel wouldn’t say anything.

“What’s wrong, Jask?” _Damn_ those witcher senses. He couldn’t sneak anything by the man. Jaskier shook his head, pressing another kiss to Eskel’s temple and pulling him down on top of him. Eskel went willingly, a full-body weight pressing Jaskier into the mattress like he was the continent’s heaviest duvet.

Tension seeped out of him like water, and for the first time since Eskel had left him in September, he felt like he could _breathe_ again. “I just—,” Jaskier started, alarmed at how wobbly his voice came out, “...this is really _hard_ ,” he whispered, blinking more tears from his eyes, even as Eskel gently kissed them away, cradling Jaskier’s face in his hands like he was precious, like he was loved and cared for and worthy of being kept safe, kept close.

“Tell me about it?” Eskel asked, voice soft like honey as he swept one callous-roughened thumb over the arch of Jaskier’s cheek, brushing away his tears with such gentle devotion Jaskier’s heart stuttered in his chest. It was the greatest gift of Jaskier’s life, to be loved by this man, to be able to love him in return.

“Okay,” he whispered, and did, talking about all his worries and frustrations and fears, talking well into the night, until his voice wore out, going scratchy with overuse, as he purged every emotion he’d kept locked up in his chest over the past exhausting six months since term had started anew at the end of last summer.

He fell asleep still talking, as Eskel petted his hair, nodding and listening and just being there for him, just holding him, gentle reassurance and warmth and love, over everything, _love_ , shining through.

**Author's Note:**

> truly the most self-indulgent thing I've ever written. Like, 100% I wrote this for me because, as I said, this _sucks_ so fucking much, but I do also hope that you enjoyed it. I might write more so subscribe if you're interested, because this isn't even the half of the shitty things I've had to deal with recently lol. So I might come back to deliver more vent fic as the urge strikes.
> 
> Let me know what you thought!


End file.
